


the equation of gravity

by orphan_account



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13413423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It's kind of a paradox, really: they're both wholly averse to love, but also half in love with each other.(Soonyoung is the complete opposite of Wonwoo, but he's a pretty good roommate. Anything more with him, though, would be messy. And to Wonwoo's credit, he actually lasts a surprising amount of time before he feels the ground give out from underneath him and falls.)





	the equation of gravity

**Author's Note:**

> For Prompt #002: How the Cynic Falls in Love 
> 
> When I realized I loved you  
> it was not romantic  
> Not flush with pink roses & wine  
> but rather normal  
> Rather standing in line at CVS  
> clutching a four pack of peanut butter cups  
> & cold medicine  
> It was a quiet realization  
> Like checking the weather I was currently standing in  
> “Huh. It’s a bit warmer  
> than I would have guessed."
> 
> \---

It was one more rotation around the sun.

Wonwoo didn’t really care for New Year’s. He’d barely survived Christmas, all the tinsel and red wrapping foil still lingering in his systems. And anyway, the holidays lost some of its magic when Wonwoo had been telling people _Happy New Year’s_ since five in the morning, wishing anonymous gamers in various timezones a good 2017. The interface of their chat window rained gold diamonds for the day, which was more annoying than festive. Wonwoo didn’t like it at all.

“It’s the principle of it,” Soonyoung said, sprawled out on the ground, perfect eyeliner be damned. “You get, like, a fresh start and crap.”

“By that logic, why would you go to a party? No amount of _fresh start_ quotes is going to fix the fact you’re starting the year with a hangover.”

Soonyoung let the remark roll off him, unperturbed. “You said you’d come.”

Wonwoo pulled a face, and Soonyoung grinned, knowing he’d won. It was one of the smaller parties, anyway, off to the side of campus, away from the heavier celebrations. _Like a plasmid_ , Wonwoo had said, and to Soonyoung’s confused stare, added,… _one of those smaller DNA circles around the main one in a bacteria_. He wasn’t completely sure if the metaphor even made sense, but Soonyoung had been calling it a plasmid party ever since. Like it was a real slang term.

They’d been roommates for about two months now.

Wonwoo clicked his laptop shut. “Should we go, now? Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I was just waiting for you to finish cutting your pixelated diamonds.”

“Shut up, dude.”

Soonyoung grinned, and then the two of them headed outside into the freezing air.

Wonwoo’s breath came out in puffs of white smoke, toes freezing inside his boots as soon as he stepped outside, and he could only imagine what Soonyoung was suffering through with his choker and the tight lines of denim around his legs. Wonwoo himself was wearing a sweater and baggy jeans.

Compromises.

The party was a relatively small gathering, disorganized as hell, because trying to organize anything in the holidays was an improbable task. It was comprised of people from a random chunk from Soonyoung’s social circle and its adjacent chains, Wonwoo tugged along for the ride. The place had heating, at least, which was all he was really concerned about. Until Wonwoo’s mind registered that he was in a crowded place and promptly gave all of his sweat glands the go-ahead.

Wonwoo wouldn’t admit it, but it didn’t actually turn out to be too bad. Wonwoo ended up hanging out with Minghao, who he sort of knew, and who also shared his sentiments about not being overly overjoyed to be here.

“Why are all of our friends extroverts?” Minghao asked.

“Because— they talked to us first?”

Minghao laughed, and Wonwoo wouldn’t admit it aloud, but he was pleased. Usually people didn’t find him too funny.

“I like that theory,” Minghao said, and stared at his solo cup with a combination of distaste and distrust. “The hell is in here?”

Wonwoo shrugged. “I don’t know. Ask Mingyu, he made it.”

“Oh god, it’s probably glitter glue, then,” Minghao mumbled. Then he shrugged and took a cautious sip, pulling an exaggerated face of disgust before downing the rest of it. “This tastes like poison.”

“Don’t die on me,” Wonwoo said. “We can’t have you passing out in that sweater.”

Wonwoo realized a second too late that his assumption that Minghao was wearing an ugly sweater on purpose might not be correct; fortunately, it was. There was no way Minghao could _not_ be aware of how terrible it looked, anyway. It looked like it’d been knitted by a toddler with chopsticks.

Minghao blushed, faint. “My boyfriend made it. It’s fucking ugly, man, I know.”

Ah. So Minghao was taken. Not that Wonwoo had been flirting with him or anything. No. The thing was, Wonwoo didn’t mind being single, really, but there were just times he felt a prominent sense of loneliness.

Wonwoo shook off the thought. Not the time to start ruminating. “You wanna head over to the Secret Santa pile and see if we can salvage anything?”

“There’s a Secret Santa pile?” Minghao asked, raising his eyebrow. “Isn’t this a New Year’s Party?”

“I guess it’s a batch job.”

The Secret Santa pile was in an even worse state than Mingyu’s punch. Wonwoo ended up with a Disney keychain of Elsa, Minghao with half a pack of origami paper. Wonwoo shoved the keychain in his sweater pocket and self-consciously danced along to the music for some time, but after awhile, Wonwoo couldn’t stand the party in general, even if it _was_ a plasmid one, and headed outside into the cold.

\---

The sky was dark and the cold cut through his jeans, the wind like knives against the backs of his hands. Hot coffee would turn to ice here, he thought. His face was numb. He didn’t know how long he’d been standing outside.

“Hey.”

Wonwoo looked. It was Soonyoung, eyes bright. He popped the metal disk on one of those blue hand warmers and tossed it to Wonwoo, who caught it and thought about exothermic reactions and warm flames.

“Hi.”

“It’s almost midnight, you know,” Soonyoung said, plopping down on the bench next to Wonwoo, hissing as he made contact with the frozen wood. “What are you doing out here?”

Wonwoo shrugged. “Just wanted to get some air,” he said. “Why are you out here, if it’s midnight? You not doing the New Year’s kiss thing?”

Soonyoung waved this off. “Overrated. And there’s no one I want to kiss in there.”

“You kiss everyone at any time except during tradition,” Wonwoo mused. “Nice.” And Wonwoo never kissed anyone at all.

Soonyoung laughed, and the two of them fell silent for awhile. The thing about Soonyoung was that he didn’t even have to say anything to put someone else at ease. His presence was a tangible thing, steel anchors and the warmth of a campfire.

Soonyoung broke the quiet a few minutes later, idly asking, “You got someone you want to kiss?”

Wonwoo shrugged, and shook his head. But maybe the cold was messing with him or something, because he added, “I used to, back in high school.” Soonyoung’s eyes widened. “But he didn’t want to kiss me back.”

“Oh.” Their breath came out in white puffs in the air. “He’s stupid, then. I’d gut him with a sword if he were here.”

Wonwoo didn’t know how to feel with that. “It wasn’t his fault, no need to gut him. And I’m over him now, don’t worry.”

Soonyoung looked away, mouth a twisted line. “Still.”

Wonwoo _was_ over him, he was sure of that. He’d gotten smarter after it, too. His chest was a safe, his mind at the forefront, heart way back with its old duct-taped scars and paper arteries. No one got to touch it. Not even him. He wished it weren’t like that, sometimes. Wished his heart had just completely withered away already. Or, in moments of weakness, wished that it hadn’t happened at all.

Wonwoo’s phone beeped, a light chime. “Happy New Year’s.”

Wonwoo hadn’t been excited for it, the transition from December 31 to January 1. He didn’t put any weight in midnight. But he wasn’t that practical, that cynical yet, and a small spark of excitement lit up in his chest when the clock switched from 11:59 to 12:00. It was a good moment, he thought, a good start, if he wanted to call it that. Standing outside under a starry sky with Soonyoung next to him, a faint smile on chapped lips.

“Cheers,” Soonyoung murmured. “Here’s hoping for a better 2017.”

\---

Wonwoo had come into college expecting to keep his head down.

If he had to find a source of blame for his balloon of a friend group, it’d probably be Jihoon, a dedicated chemistry major who, despite being just as, if not _more_ antisocial than Wonwoo, was connected to basically everyone. Jihoon was like a tree trunk, for lack of better analogy: he knew Seungcheol, Mingyu, and Soonyoung, and they were a holy trinity of charisma and extroversion, branching off to every corner of campus.

He and Jihoon both took intro to computer science sophomore year. Wonwoo wasn’t good at it, certainly, but he needed to know the basics that he’d put off during high school. For the first project, he and Jihoon had warily chosen each other as partners, and they’d agreed to meet each other on the campus quad to discuss ideas.

“I kind of suck at coding,” Wonwoo admitted, halfway through their planning. It’d been awkward so far, Wonwoo stammering out sentences and Jihoon’s eyes sharp and indifferent. Freezer-cold.

But at his words, Jihoon slumped in relief, thawing out. “Oh thank _god_ , me too, I’ve got no idea what I’m doing,” he said. “Sorry.”

“No problem. My grade in this class is already pretty bad.”

“Mine, too. So I guess we’re both past the point of caring.”

Despite both of their assertions that they didn’t care about the outcome of the project, it became pretty apparent soon that they _did_ ; they ended up staying past two AM in one of the study rooms trying to get the program to run. Jihoon’s apathetic exterior had completely defrosted by now, and he seemed ready to tear his hair out, brain-to-mouth filter as glitchy as their current code.

“Give me a knife, I’m murdering the goddamn computer,” Jihoon said, after they ran the program the fortieth time and the red error window flashed on screen.

“Try changing my syntax. I don’t know, maybe I fucked up a comma.”

Wonwoo kind of felt like he was talking underwater, like the night air was molasses.

“I think your commas are fine. Here… let me just try something?”

He fiddled around with the loop for a second and the program ran, but it ran wrong, covering the screen with lines and numbers before the screen blinked black.

“Well, it did something, this time?” Wonwoo said.

Jihoon looked like he was torn between hurling himself out the window and punching the wall. “I’m dropping this class and becoming a potato farmer.” His eyes were dead.

“Go to sleep for thirty minutes,” Wonwoo suggested. “I’ll wake you up.”

Two days later, the program finally ran and did what it was supposed to. They looked at each other and laughed, mildly slaphappy and exultant, and Jihoon mumbled something that sounded like a promise to burn more incense for his ancestors in repayment.

Wonwoo asked Jihoon to work with him the next project, and that was the start of a truce of sorts, that they’d always pick each other. Back in high school, Wonwoo had usually been the one to do all the work, and when he mentioned that to Jihoon, his eyes crinkled in a genuine smile before he said, _me too_. Jihoon was prickly and sharp and stubborn about getting the right answer, and maybe it was surprising, but Wonwoo liked that a lot. Jihoon said what he meant.

\---

And at first, he and Jihoon weren’t friends, but it evolved into something like it.

The class had a crap ton of projects, and somewhere between crying over syntax and constructing faulty foreloops, the proximity led to a certain kind of closeness. Being around Jihoon that much, however, also entailed meeting Seungcheol, Mingyu, and Soonyoung, who Jihoon called _the manifestation of his past sins_. Wonwoo understood that to mean they were his best friends.

Seungcheol and Mingyu were pretty straightforward, the same way Jihoon was. Soonyoung was a different story, an enigma not because he was a mysterious and smoky stereotype, but because he was hard to pin down. One of the universe’s black boxes.

Wonwoo wasn’t sure if he liked that or not.

\---

The first time Wonwoo met Mingyu, he and Jihoon were taking a coffee break. Well, _Jihoon_ was taking a coffee break. The dark circles under his eyes were like craters on the moon, and Wonwoo had been alarmed enough to accompany him to the campus cafe, Sevenbean.

“You don’t drink coffee?” Jihoon asked, a little incredulous, a little judgemental.

“Yeah. I don’t really like it.”

“What do you drink, then?” Jihoon asked, in a way that seemed to imply he thought Wonwoo drank cyanide on a daily basis.

“Water’s a thing,” Wonwoo said defensively. “And tea. Tea is good.”

Jihoon shook his head. “Holy crap, you like _tea_. I can’t believe we’re friends.” It’d been the first time that Jihoon had referred to them as such, and despite the rather ridiculous context, it made a small part of Wonwoo’s mind feel warm. “Tea just tastes like water. With like, some leaf.”

“It has healing properties?”

“Don’t _healing property_ bullshit me, Wonwoo, we’re college students. And anyway, I won’t argue with you. I can guilt-trip Mingyu into giving you discount tea, too.”

They walked into Sevenbean, which was fairly busy, a line snaking across the floor and through the tables. The guy manning the register was ridiculously handsome, this kind of natural handsome that magazines would die to get their hands on but would probably ruin with photoshop. Wonwoo didn’t usually notice things like attractiveness, so it probably said something about exactly how good-looking he was.

“Jihoonie!” the guy said, when it was Jihoon’s turn, flashing a smile. “Is that your boyfriend?”

Wonwoo choked on air, and Jihoon put his hand to his temple. “Wonwoo, this idiot is Mingyu,” he said, with the air of someone who had already suffered greatly before. “And Mingyu, this is Wonwoo. We are not dating.”

Behind them, someone coughed in annoyance for the holdup, and Jihoon immediately rattled off their order, cheeks pink.

“Sorry for assuming,” Mingyu told Wonwoo, as he handed them their change, which, Wonwoo noted, _did_ have a generous discount. “This place is just a usual date spot, and I got excited. Won’t do it again.”

And that was Wonwoo’s first impression of Mingyu, a little bit clumsy (he nearly dropped the change as he handed it over), soft-hearted (he clearly adored Jihoon), and slightly careless with words, but generally a good guy. Mingyu was one of those people who wore their hearts on their sleeves, a humble kind of confident. Not _predictable_ , per se, but steady.

The tea was good, too. Wonwoo usually just made the instant kind from a packet, bought them in bulk when they were on-sale, but he altered his budget a little bit so he could come to Sevenbean once or twice a week to get the good stuff.

\---

Seungcheol was the same kind of person as Mingyu.

Wonwoo’s coffee runs with Jihoon turned into eating lunch together, and Wonwoo found out that Jihoon and Seungcheol always ate at a set spot on the quad if weather allowed, this worn-down picnic table with a hole in the top that an unfortunate amount of pineapple chunks would fall through. Jihoon’s extortion of food for low prices was turning out to be a running theme; he was eating Seungcheol’s rolls right now.

(“Seungcheol stole my inches, so it’s fair,” Jihoon said.

“What?” Wonwoo asked.

“I made a joke _one time_ that I’d taken all of Jihoon’s height, and he has never stopped using it against me,” Seungcheol said, rolling his eyes. “He should’ve been a lawyer.”

Jihoon wasn’t that short, and Seungcheol wasn’t that tall, and a better culprit for Jihoon’s supposed height theft might’ve been Mingyu, but Wonwoo rolled with it.)  

Seungcheol and Jihoon were childhood friends, with a telepathy simultaneously impressive and terrifying. They held entire conversations with their eyes that Wonwoo couldn’t decipher, and Wonwoo had a feeling they held off on using their full arsenal of inside jokes solely for his sake. They were easy around each other, sharing auras, the human equivalent of covalent atoms, except they also had this weird tenseness from time to time that made Wonwoo think that maybe their relationship went a little deeper than _just friends_.

“Wonwoo’s a stats major? Cool,” Seungcheol said. “Now we just need like, tech.”

Again. Wonwoo sometimes needed translations.

“Seungcheol’s engineering, with Mingyu, and I’m science, and you’re math,” Jihoon explained to him. “So we’re still missing the T in STEM.”

“I’m good with hypothetical engineering,” Seungcheol corrected, laughing. “Mingyu’s the one you want with you if you’re stranded on a desert island.”

“That’s true,” Jihoon said, looking rather pained. “But yeah, none of us are good with tech. Seungcheol’s even worse at coding than I am.”

“I don’t think that’s possible,” Wonwoo said, and Jihoon punched him. There was force behind it, and Wonwoo nearly choked on his sandwich, the edible representation of some great tragedy, lettuce falling out the buns and meat disgustingly textured.

“Soonyoung’s pretty good at tech,” Seungcheol said.

“He doesn’t eat lunch with us, though,” Jihoon pointed out.

“Yeah, cause he’s probably eating something else.” A wink.

Jihoon whipped a piece of sliced beef at Seungcheol’s face, which skimmed the side of his forehead before falling through the tabletop crack. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, although he was laughing a little bit.

This was the first time Soonyoung had ever been mentioned to him. Wonwoo would get a much different picture later. People had the tendency to fit others into neatly labeled boxes, to take one part of someone’s personality and use it as their identifying point. Wonwoo’s tag was _asocial smart guy._ Soonyoung’s was _flirt_ , with an allergy to commitment and an affinity for one night stands. He was someone who kept his heart locked up but had so much love in his systems that it’d kill him to keep it to himself.

\---

Soonyoung was friends with Jihoon, and that was how it started.

“Who’s that?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Jihoon and Wonwoo were in Jihoon’s dorm, eating potato chips and pretending to be working. The voice in question belonged to a guy standing in the doorway, hair dyed the closest visible thing to ultraviolet.

“Hey, Soonyoung. That’s Wonwoo,” Jihoon said, his voice on-edge.

“Your stats-major friend?”

Wonwoo said, “That’s probably me, yeah.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Wonwoo.” Soonyoung walked over and took a potato chip.

“Can you look over our program?” Jihoon asked, brusque.

“Yeah, sure,” Soonyoung said, and settled himself in front of the computer screen. He worked at it for around half an hour before giving a final tap of the keys and saying, “There we go. This should work now.”

“Thanks,” Wonwoo said, and Soonyoung smiled brightly, before taking out his phone and opening up Twitter.

Jihoon had to go an hour later, seeming to be reluctant to leave, and Wonwoo pulled the laptop fully onto his lap, studying Soonyoung a little bit curiously. Soonyoung noticed him staring and didn’t seem to be perturbed by it, and Wonwoo, unsure of this reaction, said, “I like your hair.”

“Thank you,” Soonyoung said, and smiled. “It was a dare by a friend.”

“Ah. I’ve— never dyed my hair.”

It was a painfully awkward phrase, and Wonwoo fully expected Soonyoung to turn back to his phone, but when Jihoon came back, he found Wonwoo and Soonyoung discussing the color spectrum and how mantis shrimps could see more shades than humans. Wonwoo was pretty sure that Soonyoung was just humoring him with the talk, and found that he didn’t really care if Soonyoung was. Soonyoung was good at pretending he was interested.

Jihoon told him later that he and Soonyoung used to date back in high school. The way Jihoon talked about him, Wonwoo gathered that he loved Soonyoung fiercely but was also terribly annoyed with him at times. Jihoon also talked about Soonyoung’s reputation, and Wonwoo understood why Jihoon had been so reluctant to leave them alone, but Wonwoo didn’t think that Soonyoung had been flirting with him at all. It made sense to him, he thought. He’d never really been the kind of person that people flirted with.

Wonwoo was ninety percent sure that Soonyoung had just been humoring him. It was okay, though. He hadn’t known about the mantis shrimp thing beforehand, so at least he learned something off of that conversation.

\---

Back in high school, Wonwoo had been friends with this guy named Jun.

They ate lunch together. Back in freshman year, Wonwoo was sitting alone in the cafeteria, playing a game on his phone, and Jun slid into the bench across him and asked, “Can I sit here?” Wonwoo nodded shyly, and the rest occured naturally,

Jun was something else, impossibly attractive, far away from the AP sphere that Wonwoo usually hung out with, and Wonwoo wished he were like Jun, confident and easygoing. Not caring how his words would be received. Looking back at it, Wonwoo thought that perhaps that it wasn’t as much of a crush as an _idea_ of a crush. When he was around Jun, though, he always tried harder to be less weird than most people regarded him. Less plaid fabric and more tight denim. It probably didn’t work at all.

“I’m on another competition diet again,” Jun said morosely, picking at his salad.

Wonwoo put down his book. “Yeah?”

“Yeah… I don’t think I’ve eaten anything that wasn’t green for the past week.”

“You can have some of my gross cafeteria yogurt parfait, if you want.”

“Really?” Jun said, and his eyes lit up.

Wonwoo nodded, and Jun took a spoonful before saying, “wow, this tastes like so much bad cholesterol,” and not eating any more of it. Jun took dance seriously. He might complain about his diets and long workout sessions, but god knows it’d be harder on him if those were taken away from him. But that was them. Careful, unchanging. Surface level conversation only.

Analyzing it later on, Wonwoo realized that Jun wasn’t really as cool as his mind had made him out to be, hesitating with his words just as much, if not _more_ , as Wonwoo did.

It perhaps wasn’t the healthiest of relationships, in total, not because Jun was a bad person, or because Wonwoo was, but because Wonwoo was always giving. He offered Jun parts of his lunch, handed him his old math notes to copy off of, as if Wonwoo he could make up for the fact their personalities wouldn’t mesh well as a couple if he could just keep giving other things to Jun. Jun was the kind of person that Wonwoo, in theory, should be put off by, who wanted to dance when he was older and had a future pockmarked by uncertainty. Instead, Wonwoo admired him, and wished he could hold his hand.

Looking back at it, Wonwoo always knew they wouldn’t work together. He’d thought about it anyway. And somewhere back in junior year, that had all shattered.

\---

“Hi— I’m Vernon.”

Someone else was sitting at their table when Wonwoo got there, wearing a gray hoodie that said _LA_ and a nervous smile. He fidgeted with the hoodie strings, and Wonwoo tried not to be irked by the fact one string was much longer than the other.

Jun said, “Vern’s from New York. Just moved here to Chicago.”

Wonwoo nodded, expression carefully impassive. “Hi, I’m Wonwoo.”

“Wonwoo’s in our year,” Jun said. “Except he’s, like, twice as smart as everyone else here. If you need help with anything, just ask him.”

Vernon nodded. Wonwoo could see him translating. _Anything = anything academic._

_That’s all I’m good for, really_ , Wonwoo thought. It was a morbid thought, but it floated around enough in his subconscious enough that its crystallization hardly made him feel anything at all. “Yeah, I can help.”

“Really? Thanks, I’ll definitely take you up on that,” Vernon said. “First day of math and I thought they were writing French up on the board.”

“At least you’ve got a chance at understanding French,” Jun laughed. “For me it’s more like goddamn Mayan or something. Like, cave symbols.”

Scientists were working on figuring out Mayan. It worked a little like Korean, actually, letters of the alphabet stacked atop each other to create a form of art. But all Wonwoo could think about was how _lost_ he felt, how if he said that he’d just get weird looks, how maybe he and Jun had never really talked about anything worth talking about if Wonwoo had to struggle so hard to figure out what his next sentence would be.

“Or like Latin,” Wonwoo finally said. That was a dead language, right?

“Wonwoo, you can shut up, you’re like, two levels above everyone,” Jun said. He turned to Vernon, stage-whispered, “He’s probably going to take over the world someday.”

Vernon sat there all the time after that. And Wonwoo didn’t dislike him or anything, honest. He was nice and had a good sense of humor, seemed to genuinely respect Wonwoo, never called him _nerd_ like some people did.

Vernon was good at rap and sucked at math and art and Jun liked him the way he didn’t like Wonwoo. It just hurt, sometimes. Watching Jun and Vernon fall for each other. Watching Jun’s bad attempts at flirting because despite his bravado he was shy, watching as Vernon was completely oblivious and blushed fire-engine red under the heat of Jun’s gaze.

Wonwoo was smart and it wasn’t good enough to get Jun to look at him like that. That was the thing, wasn’t it always? The heartbreak was dull in his chest. It scabbed up pretty soon but it messed him up, anyway. Wonwoo thought he got it now. He wasn’t the kind of guy people liked.

He still had Jun and Vernon’s numbers saved in his phone. On Christmas and birthdays he’d send texts over. They were still together, Wonwoo was pretty sure. Jun was at a dance academy and Vernon was… Wonwoo forgot.

Wonwoo was at the state university. It was predictable, the surefire outcome. It shouldn’t have stung the way it did.

\---

In October of 2016, Wonwoo and Soonyoung became roommates.

Wonwoo’s present roommate was an asshole, and Wonwoo had scraped up enough money at his part-time job at the campus bookstore to pay for half a flat. Soonyoung’s rent was getting dangerously high, and he’d put up an offer on Craigslist a week ago.

Jihoon reluctantly set it up, acting as a catalyst. “Trust me, I don’t want to,” he’d said. “But Soonyoung and Craigslist isn’t a good combination.”

When Wonwoo moved in, Soonyoung had already cleared out a good half of the place.

“I tried,” Soonyoung said. “Hope you don’t mind that I’m slightly messy.”

And he was, but not in a way that chafed too much. It was more a lived-in feeling than outright disorganization. “It’s fine. Thanks for letting me move in with you.”

And it was— decidedly awkward, at first. The two of them simply coexisted together, with different schedules and different cereal preferences. It was like there was a line splitting the apartment apart, this side’s yours, this side’s mine. Wonwoo didn’t mind. He didn’t expect Soonyoung to humor him all the time. Pretending to like someone you lived with when you didn’t was a chore for even the best actor.

One night, Wonwoo was sitting at the kitchen table, making a spreadsheet for expenses, since first month’s rent was coming up.

“What are you doing?” Soonyoung asked, walking over. He was wearing a loose t-shirt, the fringes of his hair wet from a shower, posture slumped in exhaustion. Wonwoo wanted to yawn just looking at him.

He shrugged instead. “Just, putting together a chart. For money.”

His words were coming out all awkward and uncomfortable again, but Soonyoung didn’t leave, pulling out a chair and looking over at the paper.

“Sick budgeting skills,” he said. “I just buy instant ramen and hope for the best.”

Wonwoo stayed silent. Soonyoung pushed a couple of buttons on his graphing calculator.

“Mind if I take a picture of this?” Soonyoung asked, and Wonwoo shrugged. _Why not_? And then Soonyoung left, like Wonwoo expected him to, but five days later he’d made a simple program that incorporated everything Wonwoo had written down. It wasn’t pretty or anything, but it was— well— it was nice. Practical. Wonwoo was oddly touched. Which was probably not normal, but screw being normal.

For some reason, he felt guilty for not thinking that Soonyoung was capable of setting up something like this.

_People don’t flirt with guys like you; guys like Soonyoung can’t code_.

What a moronic thought. In a form of self-punishment, he made himself eat dinner with Soonyoung the next day.

Wonwoo didn’t come together with Soonyoung as easily as he had with Jihoon, and by extension, Jihoon’s other halves, Mingyu and Seungcheol, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Soonyoung was just different, for Wonwoo. He didn’t know how to describe it. But he didn’t mind.

\---

They grew to operate as roommates. Soonyoung worked on the program from time to time; it was now colored blue and bronze, courtesy of Wonwoo saying he was a Ravenclaw. ( _I’m a Gryffindor slash Hufflepuff_ , Soonyoung said _. I keep getting different answers on the tests I take_.) ( _You like Harry Potter?_ ) ( _I’m halfway through the series._ ) Wonwoo started putting Soonyoung’s preferred kind of ramen into the shopping cart, because both of them couldn’t cook very well.

In November, they went shopping at IKEA because Wonwoo’s desk was crap.

“IKEA is pretty damn great,” Soonyoung said, as they walked in. Wonwoo was uncomfortably aware that this was sort of _domestic_ , but that was dumb. He pushed the thought off a cliff. “There’s no politics in here. Just, like, overpriced lampshades.”

“You don’t get to sleep on the beds, though,” Wonwoo pointed out.

“Technicalities.”

The two of them left with the desk and a pack of cinnamon rolls— _we can work that into the budget, c’mon, this is necessary_ , Soonyoung said— and then they proceeded to royally mess up while trying to put it together.

“I don’t mesh well with instructions,” Soonyoung protested. “Hey, Wonwoo, did you see where that nail went, I swear it was right— _ow, god fucking dammit_ —”

“We’re pretty incompetent.”

“I’m not losing to a _desk_.” Soonyoung muttered, and then laughed. “You know, I feel like we did everything backward. Isn’t furniture shopping supposed to happen _when_ you become roommates?”

Wonwoo shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a set order, is it? Besides, I think we did it fine.”

Soonyoung nodded, before he asked, “I’ve been doing okay, right, though? I didn’t make anything awkward? No violation of unsaid ground rules or anything?”

His voice was lighthearted, teasing, but Wonwoo thought maybe he knew what Soonyoung was talking about. Soonyoung sometimes back in the mornings with marks showing above his shirt, and Soonyoung was well aware of what was said about him, since he’d make jokes about his own reputation at times. And maybe Wonwoo didn’t understand the way Soonyoung operated, but then again, he’d never dated or kissed anyone in his life.

And Soonyoung was nice. He tried to take note of Wonwoo’s spaghetti preference and cared about things like putting together a desk for him despite the fact he’d stabbed himself with a nail at least five times already, and he was deadly smart even if he played it off. He’d stay up late to code on weekdays and offered to help Wonwoo with his projects on the side.

Wonwoo never cared for gossip, anyway.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Wonwoo said. “Except accidentally blast music a couple of times at three in the morning while I was asleep.”

“Listen, my headphones are crap,” Soonyoung said, and he looked relieved.

\---

After the New Year’s Eve, Wonwoo realized that the two of them might be friends.

Their schedules still didn’t mesh well, but they made it work. They talked in the mornings, as Soonyoung drenched his Cocoa Bops in milk and Wonwoo munched on plain Cheerios, and in the middle of the night, when neither of them could sleep. The parts of the day that were lethargic, where the rest of the world didn’t really feel awake.

Soonyoung probably considered them friends already. Wonwoo felt a little stupid for how unsure he was anyway.

“We should get pancakes,” Soonyoung said, two days after the New Year’s party.

Wonwoo raised an eyebrow. “What brought this on?”

“I don’t know, it’s morning, and we’re out of cereal. I mean, if you want to eat the cardboard box or some shit, I’m cool with that. But, _pancakes_.”

“I personally prefer waffles.”

“Oh my god,” Soonyoung said, pulling a face, and Wonwoo was reminded of the time that he’d told Jihoon he liked tea over coffee. It was strange, how people cared about the smallest things, but also kind of endearing. Human idiosyncrasies. “Well, where we’re going also has your squares from hell, so you’re coming.”

The corner of Wonwoo’s mouth quirked up. “Alright, alright.”

Soonyoung drove them over to a breakfast house about half a mile away, in his cheap car that smelled like an amalgamation of air fresheners because he’d bought them in bulk and wanted to try them out. It was a good restaurant, Wonwoo could tell. Some places just had that aura. Like, if existing in them weren’t so expensive, Wonwoo would sit there and drink tea and just read for the entire afternoon. Bonus points if there was rain falling down the windows and classical music in the background.

They were actually playing classical music in here.

“Cool, it’s Debussy,” Wonwoo muttered.

Soonyoung squinted. “What?”

“Clair de Lune. It’s what’s on the speakers.”

Wonwoo waited for the quip, or at least the amused glance, but Soonyoung just said, “Unfortunately, I know zero about classical music, but like, Pachelbel's lit.”

Kwon Soonyoung. Just when you thought you could pin him down.

Soonyoung continued, “The only reason I know that is because back in high school, I thought _Canon in D_ was some kind of gay anthem—” Wonwoo doubled over laughing, probably freaking out the cashier five meters away “— shut _up,_ I was fourteen—”

Wonwoo continued to laugh, and Soonyoung stuck an elbow into his side.

\---

And then there was that other time when Soonyoung decided to marathon movies randomly on a Friday night. Wonwoo had asked if Soonyoung would rather be somewhere else, and Soonyoung just shrugged, said, _it’s all the same, really._ They ate pizza drowned in a ridiculous amount of toppings and each got to choose half of the movie selection.

Soonyoung preferred more lighthearted things, feel-good and funny and occasionally sexy, and Wonwoo liked horror. The Peanuts movie interspersed with _The Grudge._ Soonyoung didn’t scream at the scary ones, just went blood-white at times and covered his eyes and sometimes made a couple of uneasy jokes about the protagonist’s terrible life decisions. They both liked the Studio Ghibli movies, though.

“Spirited Away was my childhood,” Soonyoung said. “Anime in general. I have a bunch of posters that I didn’t bring here because I didn’t want to fold them into the box.”

“We could order some off Amazon…” Wonwoo suggested.

“Can we deal with the shipping fees, though?”

“Point.”

Soonyoung grinned.

Wonwoo said, “You kind of seem like an anime character, actually.”

The more he thought about, the more truth it held. Soonyoung kind of _was_ an anime character, with the bright hair and good looks and bubbly personality and constant ambition.

“I’ve actually heard that a couple of times before. Right around when I dyed my hair.”

“You just need an OST. And maybe a cool catchphrase.”

“I’ve got the cool catchphrase part covered, but ooh, I want an OST,” Soonyoung laughed. “And also a ridiculously good-looking love interest that’s like, _very, very_ fucking apparently a love interest.”

Wonwoo stayed silent. Soonyoung’s tone was bitter. The credits rolled in the background, the boring part of the credits where the animators gave up on trying to add music and cool fonts and just let the blocky text scroll higher and higher. Soonyoung fidgeted with the rings on his fingers. Cheap rings. The kind that were just for show, but looked good on him, anyway.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung said finally. “It’s like, midnight. I’m tired.”

“Our sleep schedules are both crap.”

“Right? My REM cycle’s fucking dead.” Soonyoung was back to normal, surefire footing. “Anyway, I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight anyway, with all of the dead people I just saw. Thanks for that, Wonwoo.”

“Anytime.”

\---

They were friends, but they weren’t anything more than that.

Soonyoung was fun to talk to. Wonwoo liked that about him. He was smart, a type of smart that was more intrinsic than anything else, more random trivia than heavy academics, more joking wit than an affinity for language, and it made talking to him fun, like playing the best kind of game. But Wonwoo didn’t think about dating him. Wonwoo didn’t think about dating at _all_. And Soonyoung— people like Soonyoung ate people like Wonwoo for breakfast, emotionally. (God. Soonyoung wasn’t a cannibal.)

But yeah. So. Platonic.

Wonwoo hated Hollywood plotlines. He saw the point of romantic comedies but disliked them. Soonyoung adored them, though, the _true love_ crap and all that. One time they’d talked about it, and Wonwoo said, _they probably break up after the credits roll._ And Soonyoung had retorted, _but that’s the point. It doesn’t have to be forever to be a good thing_. Which was the sort of statement that Wonwoo would have admitted defeat to if he were a less stubborn person, but he just shrugged and went back to his ramen.

Sometimes, though… sometimes Wonwoo wondered.

\---

There was this one time where Soonyoung was on this random dating site, mainly trolling the people he talked to. He was currently in the middle of a conversation with someone who had named themselves _12 inch ;)))_ , asking them how they liked their Subway sandwiches.

Wonwoo thought he saw _I personally prefer oven roasted chicken_ before the other person ended the conversation.

Soonyoung clicked the laptop shut and sighed. “They didn’t even give me a chance.”

“To be fair, I think it was pretty obvious that you weren’t what they were looking for,” Wonwoo said, sitting next to him on the couch with his textbook open. “I mean, oven roasted chicken? What if they were vegan?”

Soonyoung laughed. “Sure, that was definitely the problem.” He leaned back. “I actually used to go on these sites with the hopes of getting a conversation. Like, a real one. Not even in a romantic sense, just…”  

“You wanted to talk to someone?”

Wonwoo got that. He didn’t say it, but he used to try and strike up conversation with the people he played _Diamond Edge_ with, until one day he just gave up. It was sometime around when Jun got together with Vernon. He didn’t talk to anyone online beyond stuff like _cool armor_ and _how’d u get that gem without membership_ now.

“Yeah. I think when I was, like, thirteen I made friends with this nice lady named Carol on Omegle. She was fifty and offered to bake me cookies if we ever met.”

Wonwoo nearly snorted out his water. “What the hell?”

“I can’t make this shit up, man,” Soonyoung said, and cracked open a Coke. He stared mournfully at the label. “We need to stop buying these, by the way. There’s an on-campus soft drink tax.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” Wonwoo said. “It’s fine, Coke’s a capitalistic machine.”

“Capitalistic machine. Amazing,” Soonyoung muttered. “Whatever. Hey, Wonwoo, jokes aside, if you want… I could set up a Timber account for you. You’re pretty photogenic.”

Wonwoo set down his water and frowned. He didn’t know what Soonyoung was implying. Usually, his meaning was crystal clear, but Wonwoo couldn’t help but wonder if Soonyoung was making fun of him. Wonwoo had a dating account set up for him as a prank, once, in high school, not Timber but some other site. “Hobbies: doing math, being a nerd. Looking for: a life.” He remembered being upset for a few days and not telling his parents. It got taken down for a week, fortunately.

“People don’t date guys like me,” Wonwoo said, terse.

Soonyoung’s eyebrows furrowed, confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Basically what is says on the tin.”

“ _I’d_ date you,” Soonyoung said, and the intensity to his statement took Wonwoo aback for a second. Then the moment shattered as he touched back down to reality, where Soonyoung was Soonyoung and Wonwoo was Wonwoo. Them, a couple? Ha.

\---

It was strange, though, that Soonyoung didn’t seem to get it. He was the kind of person that knew everything about what people liked. He knew what to say, what to wear, what to do to get people to look at him; it came naturally. Wonwoo, on the other hand, was awkward. He would ignore someone for hours on end if he couldn’t get a math problem figured out, which was a destined irritant for any relationship. It was like something someone said back in high school: “yeah, nerds, they’re probably going to be successful and all that, but like I don’t want to date them, you know? Sue me.”

And Soonyoung didn’t seem to _get that_.

Wonwoo was drawing polar graphs one day, kind of just doodling them on the side of the paper, and Soonyoung looked over and said, “Whoa.”

Wonwoo looked up. “Hmm?”

“Those flower things,” Soonyoung said, pointing. “That was what, trig? I don’t remember any of the equations.”

Wonwoo shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought those were cool. I went through a phase when I was kind of obsessed with them… it’s probably not normal. The one that looked like a bean was my favorite.”

“I liked the one that looked like one of those spinny seed things,” Soonyoung said. “That’s cool, though. You could decorate a room with those things. Einstein aesthetic.”

Wonwoo snorted. “Maybe I could start up a Pinterest blog, along with your hypothetical Timber dating account.”

“Oh my god, please don’t tell me you took that seriously,” Soonyoung said. “What if they don’t like your polar graphs? What if they don’t know that R equals theta?”

Wonwoo looked away, flipped to a new page. Soonyoung was just poking fun. “Then they don’t know R equals damn theta. Being academically oriented doesn’t automatically mean you want to date a clone.”

Although that was the expectation, back then. That he’d grow up to marry someone who was straight-laced, with an engineering or doctoring degree to complement his statistics one. And sure, Soonyoung did computer science, but he didn’t fit that kind of box. Wonwoo envied him at that moment, this kind of envy that burned so quick and bright it might be mistaken for hatred. No one teased Soonyoung about theta equations.

Soonyoung looked a little taken aback by the sharpness of Wonwoo’s tone. Maybe hurt, too. He looked as if he wanted to say something but was holding the words back.

That was Valentine’s Day. Wonwoo remembered that a few hours later and drew a heart polar graph, just because. It was his least favorite graph. It looked like an ass.

\---

In spring, Wonwoo met Joshua at Sevenbean.

It sounded like the beginning of a bad romance anime. _Your Chai in April_. The reality of it was much different. Wonwoo had been there to get tea for himself and coffee for Jihoon, who’d been exhausted for the past week trying to finish his research paper.

Unfortunately, the lid of the coffee wasn’t quite sealed, and when someone bumped into him, Wonwoo’s— Jihoon’s— coffee got slopped all over Wonwoo’s sweater. It wasn’t that good of a sweater, the threads all frayed and a small hole widening near the armpit, but Wonwoo had been hoping to hold onto it for another month or so. Soonyoung would be pleased at the excuse to throw it out, at least. He’d complained awhile ago that the jacket looked like an artifact from the Neolithic age.

“Oh crap,” the guy said, in the present. “I’m sorry. I’ll buy you another coffee.”

“It’s fine,” Wonwoo said, wincing as the coffee dripped down onto his pants. “This was my friend’s, actually. I’m pretty sure he’d rather I’d been holding the coffee rather than wearing it, but I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Actually, Wonwoo wasn’t banking on that. Jihoon wasn’t one to listen to logic when tired.

But the other guy just laughed, although it really wasn’t that funny, and said, “Okay, I’ll buy _him_ another coffee, then. What’s his order?”

“Black. It’s fine, though, really, the lid wasn’t—” but the guy was already in line.

He and Wonwoo talked for awhile as they waited for the other people to order. Small talk, the safe surface kind, but Wonwoo found he was more at ease with the other than with most people. The guy’s name was Joshua, and that his voice was soft and pleasant, the kind of voice that suited lullabies and comforting words.

“Here you go,” Joshua said cheerfully, handing Wonwoo the new cup. “Again, I’m so sorry. I wish I could do something about your clothes.”

“It’s fine. My roommate hated this sweatshirt, anyway.”

“It’s not— it’s not that bad of a sweatshirt.” Funny enough, Joshua’s attempt at a lie convinced Wonwoo that it was more than any of Soonyoung’s outright rants.

Wonwoo changed the subject. “Are you here for anything in particular? Don’t let me hold you up…”

“No, you’re fine,” Joshua assured. “I’m just here to study. I come here a lot, though, actually. What about you?”

Wonwoo twisted the cup in his hands. “Just here to get coffee for my friend. I should probably leave now, before it gets cold. It was nice meeting you.”

“Same to you, Wonwoo. It’d be cool to talk to you again.”

And that was Joshua. One of the guys on the far end of the bell curve, no, who wasn’t even on the same plane as the rest of everyone at all. It wasn’t often, but sometimes people were just that genuine and nice. Joshua told him when he was usually in here, and Wonwoo told him he’d see him. It wasn’t a _date_ , or anything, although if Wonwoo were even the slightest bit inclined toward romance he might toy with the idea, but as it was, it wasn’t often that Wonwoo found someone he liked to talk to.

When Wonwoo told Soonyoung about it, his mouth twisted a little.

“He spilled his _coffee_ on you?” he asked in disbelief.

“It was Jihoon’s coffee.”

“I don’t give a shit whose coffee it was, Wonwoo. Technicalities.”

“He ruined that sweater you really hate.”

“Oh, the one with the donut pun? Nice,” Soonyoung said, perking up. But then his mouth thinned out again. “Do you realize how much that sounds like the start of a Hollywood romcom plotline?”

“Don’t you like the Hollywood romcom shit?”

“Yeah, but _you_ don’t,” Soonyoung muttered, and Wonwoo was confused.

Soonyoung went into the bathroom to take a shower, and Wonwoo mulled their conversation over, before giving up and going to read _All the Light We Cannot See_ . But as beautiful as Anthony Doerr’s writing was, he couldn’t concentrate. Soonyoung’s voice had been almost mocking, a leer. _I don’t give a shit. Yeah, but_ you _don’t_. Was it really so unrealistic that he might’ve been asked out? Not that he had. but like Soonyoung said, _technicalities._

Soonyoung usually sang in the shower, but it was surprisingly quiet tonight. Just the patter of faucet water on tile before it shut off.

\---

As Wonwoo predicted, Joshua _was_ ridiculously nice.

“STEM major?” Joshua asked. Then hastily added, “Not judging at all. It’s just funny that we all tend to clump together.”

“I don’t think I’ve interacted with a liberal arts major ever since I stepped foot on this campus,” Wonwoo mused. “But I don’t tend to interact with too many people, so.”

Joshua laughed. “I’m the same, actually. I used to have a guitar channel back in high school, if that counts as liberal arts at all.”

“Hmm, maybe. Were you any good?”

“I posted a bunch of these acoustic covers. I don’t know if I was good or anything,” Joshua said, although with the way he said it, Wonwoo was pretty sure that he was. “I still play the guitar from time to time.”

“Learning an instrument sounds nice,” Wonwoo said. “I took piano lessons in second grade. I was kicked out after I nearly broke the keyboard.”

Joshua choked, laughing. “Dude, how? That’s insane.” He paused. “But… yeah. I used to want to be a musician back then, but I switched to comp-sci due to practicality. I mean, charities need someone to set up their website, right?”

It was hilarious how casually he said it. Like _yes, I am a human guardian angel, don’t mind me_. “That’s cool. My roommate’s also a comp-sci major,” Wonwoo said.

“Oh, the sweater hater?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“What’s he like?”

“Um—” good grief, Soonyoung was a bunch of abstract things that Wonwoo would feel like a real idiot for saying out loud. Soda bubbles. Silly putty. Chokers. “He’s— interesting. You’d probably like him.”

“I’ll take your word for it. My roommate’s okay. We don’t talk that much, though.”

And it was funny. That was a concept Wonwoo barely fathomed anymore. That he and Soonyoung were just roommates, just the paid joining of separate spheres. He and Soonyoung weren’t best friends— if Wonwoo had to pinpoint someone he was best friends with, it’d probably be Jihoon, although neither of them would admit it out loud. Soonyoung had his own category. Wonwoo didn’t really feel like naming it.

They were informal meetings, because usually they were on their way to somewhere else, but his and Joshua’s schedules were pretty in sync so it worked out fairly well. If Wonwoo was in Sevenbean, there was a pretty high chance that Joshua would be there also. It was nice. They were alike, with the fact they were more intuitive than down to earth, and liked books, and had rather strange senses of humor, but the thing about Joshua was that he’d somehow managed to stay idealistic while Wonwoo was cynical.

And maybe… being idealistic… maybe it was an okay way to be.

Around a month after Wonwoo knew him, Joshua’s cup came with a little doodle of an ice cream cone and the note “We should go get ice cream sometime! If you want. Sorry, I’m a little bit sick of coffee haha ~ Mingyu.”

Mingyu’s handwriting was neat, and when Wonwoo looked over, Mingyu was ringing up someone else’s order with a nervous smile.

“Oh,” Joshua murmured. “Mingyu… is he the barista?” He blushed. “Sorry. That was a dumb question.”

Wonwoo’s mouth was open. Mingyu had talked about finding one of the customers cute before, but Wonwoo had no idea that it was _Joshua_ he was talking about. Wonwoo felt a little dumb, now, actually. Mingyu had asked, with lightheartedness, _oh, are you two dating_? Wonwoo had been too focused on denying it to realize any ulterior motives.

Wonwoo asked, “Are you going to go for it?”

Joshua’s mouth curved into a gentle smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I am.”

And Wonwoo was happy for them, because he might hate romance movies but couldn’t dislike the real-life love story unfolding in front of him, but it dug a hole in his stomach all the same. Everyone was dating, or at least doing their version of it. And Wonwoo…

_I can’t even love myself_. The thought struck him with piercing clarity, and it was so depressing that Wonwoo had to shake his head several times to get rid of it.

That night, Wonwoo went and looked up Joshua’s guitar channel. Joshua had lied. He was good, had a couple of thousand subscribers, easy in front of the camera, strummed the strings like the instrument had been designed to be sitting in his lap. Wonwoo was on a cover of _Dear No One_ when Soonyoung walked over. “What are you doing?” Soonyoung asked, looking at Wonwoo’s laptop. “Ooh, he’s cute.”

Joshua’s attractiveness hadn’t really ever occurred to him, but Wonwoo supposed he had a nice arrangement of facial features. “That’s Joshua.”

Soonyoung was silent for a moment. “Wait— Joshua? Like, coffee shop guy?”

Wonwoo cringed at the description. “Sure.”

“He’s really good at guitar,” Soonyoung murmured, looking a little more at the video, before he got off the bed and opened his own laptop. Wonwoo clicked his shut five videos later, debating whether to write a comment, before deciding he could just tell Joshua his music was good in person.

“Hey,” Wonwoo said, and he wasn’t sure why he was telling Soonyoung this. “Mingyu asked Joshua out via coffee cup today. It was really cliche. You’d like it.”

Soonyoung nearly dropped his laptop. “Wait, _Mingyu_? Like, Kim Mingyu?”

“Do we know any other Mingyus who would ask someone out via coffee cup?”

“Wait, so— Joshua— your coffee shop guy—” Soonyoung shook his head, looking dazed, like he’d just been subjected to the biggest plot twist of the century. In Wonwoo’s opinion, it was an overreaction. “And then— what— whoa—”

The whole thing was kind of weird, in Wonwoo’s opinion. Thinking back at it, it was almost like Soonyoung had been _jealous_. Which didn’t compute.

\---

The rest of the year passed relatively peacefully. Wonwoo nearly had a mental breakdown during finals, he got a cold in May, and his parents moved out to a new apartment and Wonwoo had to bust out his tiny bit of practical consumer knowledge to help them out, but otherwise, nothing else happened.

Soonyoung’s birthday was on June 15th, and it didn’t occur with much fanfare for most of the day.

“You know what _sucks_ about having your birthday be right in the middle of June?”  Soonyoung said, as finals ended, “It’s a toss up whether you’re still at school or not.”

This year, it was _right_ before everyone headed home for summer vacation. The air was sweet, bright blue skies and the vestiges of a crescent moon in the sky. Like the atmosphere was celebrating also, although that was a presumptuous thought. Wonwoo was just happy that it was a nice day for Soonyoung. Wonwoo liked rain, liked the sound of raindrops pattering against windowpane, but Soonyoung claimed that gray clouds were gloomy and depressing as hell.

Wonwoo got him a bracelet as a present, this circlet of fire-colored leather threads. It had no practical value; he’d just seen it and bought it because it reminded him of Soonyoung. A week later he was embarrassed at his impulsiveness and got him a gift card, safe and relatively impersonal, twenty dollars to a popular smoothie shop.

Wonwoo never claimed to be good at presents.  

If Soonyoung was displeased, though, he didn’t show it. His eyes crinkled up and his cheeks bunched together (rather like a hamster, Wonwoo thought) before he slipped the bracelet on his wrist.

“Thank you!” he beamed. “I’ll make sure to get you something good for your birthday.”

“You don’t have to.” Besides, knowing Soonyoung, he’d probably forget. “You don’t even know when my birthday _is_ , anyway.”

“Yes I do!” Soonyoung said defensively. A pause. “Wait, crap, no I don’t.”

“And I’m not telling you.”

“I’ll get it out of you somehow,” Soonyoung said, tone simultaneously mellow and threatening. “Thanks for the gift card, too. I love _Berry Nice_ , but I’m usually broke as hell.”

The two of them were sprawled out on Wonwoo’s bed, _happy birthday_ notifications popping up on the screen of Soonyoung’s phone. His contact list was long; he knew everyone, and he was the kind of charismatic where people would remember his birthday. Or maybe he just actually bothered to put it on his Instagram profile. _Wonwoo_ wouldn’t know. He had a Goodreads account and that was about it.

“The bracelet’s really nice,” Soonyoung said, and raised it up toward the light.

“Please don’t say that to make me feel better. I bought it cheap.”

“I’m not. And besides, I would’ve been horrified if you spent a lot of money on me, anyway,” Soonyoung said. “Dude, I’m going to a bar with some guys tonight, wanna come with? I know you don’t like that kind of stuff.”

Wonwoo hesitated. On one hand, he did care about Soonyoung a lot. On the other, bars _really_ weren’t his scene. “I…”

“It’s alright, the beer there’s shitty as hell anyway, it’s just the principle of it,” Soonyoung laughed. “Don’t sweat it.”

So Wonwoo got to be part of the quiet part of Soonyoung’s birthday, although he pretended not to notice when Soonyoung called his parents and got off the phone with his eyes suspiciously moist. They tested out a random game that Soonyoung found online— _oh my god, this is_ horrifying, Soonyoung said in horror, _I love it, the creator’s a genius_. Wonwoo didn’t know anything about dating sims, but he didn’t think it’d go so well with psychological horror.

Around five, Soonyoung got a request to video call, and unlike with most of the messages he’d been getting through the day, he immediately responded.

Wonwoo couldn’t see anything for a second, the other side pitch-black and staticy. Binary and pixels scrambling to arrange themselves for a conversation across oceans. And then the camera focused, two guys about Soonyoung’s age, maybe a little younger.

“Hi?” one of them said. “Hello? Hello?”

They were speaking Korean. Wonwoo’s Korean was pretty bad, but he could at least communicate. He was a little rusty with honorifics, though— eh, well.

“We can hear you,” Soonyoung said, a smile on his face. “Kwannie! Channie!”

“Good to know you haven’t given up on the nicknames, Soonyoung-hyung,” the left guy said. “Who’s the guy with you?”

“That’s my roommate, Wonwoo,” Soonyoung said, and told Wonwoo, “those are my friends from back home. Seungkwan’s the one on the left, the right’s Chan.” Soonyoung had told him that he’d moved here before, but Wonwoo had never really thought about it. Maybe he should’ve.

Seungkwan took a noisemaker out of his pocket and blew into it. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, you idiot hyung, glad to see you’re still alive for another year.”

“Yeah, happy birthday,” Chan echoed, less loud but equally genuine nonetheless.

Wonwoo felt like he was intruding. He asked Soonyoung, “Is this a hometown only thing? I can leave.”

“No, dude, you’re fine, it’s not exclusive,” Soonyoung said, and on the other side, Seungkwan nodded in assent. “Plus, I’m pretty sure they said something about wanting to meet you a while ago.”

“Yeah, please stay,” Seungkwan said enthusiastically. “Our time zones don’t mesh at all, so we’re probably going to have to head out soon, anyway, Chan needs to go to bed—”

“Oh my _god_ , Seungkwan-hyung, shut _up_ , that is so not the reason—”

Soonyoung laughed, bright and loud. “I saw your graduation pictures,” he told Chan. “Very nice. Very candid.”

“The photographer didn’t know what he was doing,” Chan mumbled, embarrassed.

“Are you guys still in school?” Seungkwan asked, squinting at the dorm room.

“Break started about a week ago for us,” Chan added. “Seungkwan has already won, like, seventeen beach volleyball tournaments.”

“Sounds like him. We’re almost out, too,” Soonyoung told them. “Our stuff’s packed up.”

He picked up the laptop and tried to focus the camera around the room, and Wonwoo was a little scared he’d drop it. Soonyoung seemed different around his childhood friends, easy in a way that he didn’t really show around campus. Wonwoo realized that maybe Soonyoung’s natural charisma, his natural ability to know what to say and do, might not be so completely natural after all.

“Soonyoung, we can’t see anything, stop,” Seungkwan said, and Soonyoung pouted but complied. “Hey, can you give the cam to Wonwoo? I wanna talk to him.”

Soonyoung snorted. “Thank you, guys. I’m really feeling the love.”

“C’mon, we’ve never gotten to meet him,” Seungkwan said.

Wonwoo froze like a deer in the headlights, and Soonyoung mouthed, _sorry_ , before passing the laptop over. _There’s nothing to worry about_ , Wonwoo tried to tell himself. _They’re just new people. Their opinions don’t matter._

“Hi,” he mumbled.

“Hey,” Chan said, tilting his head. “Soonyoung talks about you a lot in his texts. How’s he as a roommate?”

Seungkwan added, “I’m like, surprised you’re still alive. Did he tell you about how he burned water one time?

That wasn’t chemically probable, but the way Seungkwan said it, he had Wonwoo believing him. He shook his head, and Seungkwan laughed.

“He’s a pretty good roommate,” Wonwoo said, and then, because he felt like that wasn’t good enough, “although he did burn the instant ramen cup one time before he even put it in the microwave.”

Soonyoung interjected, “Whoa, okay, we said we wouldn’t talk about that—” he wrenched the computer out of Wonwoo’s hands, yelled, “Wonwoo once made a mini mushroom cloud explosion. We had to sleep out in the hall for two days.”

“Let that _go_.”

“No. Isn’t the point of being your roommate to have dirt on you?”

In the background, Seungkwan cackled at their interaction, and Chan wore an amused smile. Wonwoo slipped out of their call after a while, sitting in the background and idly thumbing through a book. He was pretty good at the act of disappearing. He wondered what they thought of him, wondered if he was mishearing things when Seungkwan said, _I like him, I hope he’s treating you okay_ , and Soonyoung said, _we aren’t anything but friends, don’t get wrong ideas_ , and Chan said, _alright, hyung, but try not to mess up, alright? I’ll kill him if_ he _does, anyway_.

_You’re too young to be threatening murder_ , Seungkwan said, and then the call ended.

\---

When Wonwoo got back to his hometown, it was the same as always, kind of sleepy with the rows of shrubbery all in a line and someone’s mailbox knocked over from a bad driving lesson. The usual.

Wonwoo was reading a book when his phone rang, and he fumbled under his covers to get it out. It was probably Walgreens. Or spam. But the number looked familiar, and after a few seconds he registered that it was Jun. Who even called anymore? Wen Junhui did, apparently. Maybe it was for the best; had Jun texted, Wonwoo would probably leave Jun on read for twenty minutes before finally coming up with a one-word response. And Jun probably knew that.

Wonwoo answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

It was silent on the other end of the line for a second. “Hey!” Jun’s voice was muted over phone. “This is Wonwoo, right? Are you home for break? We could meet up.”

Wonwoo didn’t answer for a second. He could pretend Jun had the wrong number, that this was someone else. But he found that he didn’t really want to do that. He and Jun hadn’t talked in a long time, and it wasn’t like Jun had ever done anything wrong to Wonwoo. “Sure,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

“... I haven’t thought that far yet.”

Wonwoo glanced over at his book. Shame. “Get back to me when you have.”

“Wait, don’t hang up, I’m thinking,” Jun said, laughing. “Um… what about that coffee place on the street near our old school? I think it was called, like, Hello?”

They’d never gone there before, but they’d talked about it once or twice. Wonwoo said that it looked nice but he’d never been there, and Jun said that he couldn’t go because he was _always_ eating salad. Also, they never met up outside of school much at all, really. Wonwoo got the sense that Jun was trying to tie up loose ends or something.

“Yeah, we can meet up there. Does tomorrow work for you?”

The call ended five minutes later, and Wonwoo looked at his phone thoughtfully for a second before returning to his book. Dully, he wondered if his past self would’ve been thrilled to go to a coffee shop with Jun, a place so thoroughly tainted with romantic connotations, but present-him felt nothing. There was never a specific moment when Wonwoo got over Jun, but at some point in time Wonwoo was able to think of him and not want to hold his hand.

There was residue, of course, but it wasn’t particularly Jun-oriented. If Wonwoo were a less mathematical kind of person, he might acknowledge that what had happened broke his heart. As it was right now, though, he would say that his heart was a perfectly functional organ. His mind didn’t understand the extent of its own guardedness. His brain didn’t acknowledge that maybe, Wonwoo hadn’t healed completely right.

\---

Hello was a local business, with a pastel floral theme and loopy calligraphy covering the walls. The pastries were organized prettily and the smell of coffee permeated the air. Jun was there early— he’d always been early— and he wore a blue hoodie and held a cup of coffee in his hands, staring out the window. Wonwoo hesitated for a moment before walking over to the table and sitting down.

“Hi.”

Jun beamed, looking like he might hug him or something. He didn’t, though, and Wonwoo was a little relieved.

“Wonwoo!” he said. “I haven’t seen you in person since forever. You got new glasses.”

“That I did,” Wonwoo said. Smooth sentence structure? What was that? “And, um, you dyed your hair.”

“Yeah, I’ve dyed my hair, like, fifty times for random performances. Purple was my favorite.” Wonwoo nodded awkwardly, own hair still untouched. “I’m probably going to go bald by fifty.”

“You seem okay with that.”

“I’d pull it off.” His tone was easy, confident. Different from high school in that it seemed more real. “So what’ve you been up to lately?”

“... Not much.”

“Exciting.”

“Sorry.” Wonwoo didn’t want to kill Jun’s attempt at conversation, honest. “Just… you know me. I’m boring. I like, do my stats homework and go to sleep. Rinse. Repeat.” Jun’s mouth twisted a little, and Wonwoo reminded himself he didn’t care. “You?”

“Dance performances and shit. This is the first time I’ve been able to come back home for break for awhile.”

Wonwoo nodded, acknowledging this. The gap between them stretched out painfully, but Wonwoo didn’t speak. The thing was, he _didn’t_ feel like telling Jun everything. His life was boring, but it wasn’t _that_ boring, and he didn’t know how to explain that to Jun. He didn’t know how to explain to him how he was getting the grasp of certain formulas and how he was friends with his hurricane of a roommate and how he’d bonded with Jihoon over shitty coding. Because it was important to Wonwoo, but Jun would find it mundane.

“Are you and Vernon still dating?” Wonwoo asked. He didn’t know why he asked that. That was probably crossing so many lines, both external and internal.

“Huh?” A look of surprise flashed over Jun’s face. “Um… yeah. We’re doing good. We’ve been making long distance work.”

So they hadn’t broken up, then. Wonwoo was relieved. That would’ve been awkward. He nodded. “I used to like you back in high school.”

_Wait, what the fuck_? What kind of twisted agenda did his subconscious even _have_?

Jun’s eyes widened, and Wonwoo was terrified that he’d bullshit an answer and then hightail it out of here. “I mean, I don’t, anymore, of course,” Wonwoo rambled. “I’m really happy for you and Vernon. I don’t know why I said that. It was a long time ago.”

“No, you’re fine,” Jun said. “I just— I never knew that.”

“Yeah, well, now you do,” Wonwoo mumbled, and looked down at his cup. “Seriously, you’re good. Again, I have no idea why I said that.”

“I’m sorry I was too dense to notice,” Jun said sincerely. “To be fair though, you always seemed like— too good for me? If that makes any sense?”

It didn’t, but Wonwoo wasn’t about to fight him about that. A sudden expanse of exhaustion wash over him. “Yeah. Doesn’t matter, it was a long time ago.”

Jun nodded, and the two of them exchanged small talk for a bit— Wonwoo’s birthday was coming up soon, Jun’s dance instructor was a completely dick, etc. etc. Half an hour later Jun’s coffee was finished and he had to go, and he told Wonwoo he’d text him more. Wonwoo wasn’t sure if he meant it, but it didn’t matter. They were on separate trajectories now. Whether they kept it in contact or not wasn’t too important.

Wonwoo regretted telling Jun his past infatuation— what had he been searching for? Closure? Redemption? There was a sick feeling at Jun’s response, and he realized it was because it felt like _pity_. _You always seemed too good for me_ , Jun had said. But in the end, it’d been Jun who had the upper hand, Wonwoo who’d been rejected. Empty words. Excuses.

Still, it wasn’t Jun’s fault. It was Wonwoo’s. He wasn’t the kind of person people liked.

(Now five miles to the left, Jun would’ve begged to differ. Unfortunately, he was too far away for him to explain what he’d actually meant.)

\---

Over the summer, Soonyoung and Wonwoo didn’t actually talk very much.

Wonwoo assumed that Soonyoung was off doing _Soonyoung_ things. He’d never admit it, but in his mind, he pictured Soonyoung at the beach, flirting with the lifeguard, sand on his legs as he played beach volleyball against a friend; at Hawaiian style bars with neon lights and drinks with mini umbrellas in them; riding roller coasters at the Six Flags amusement park. Bronzy tan and far away. Wonwoo had no place in that.

Wonwoo didn’t check his phone, but if he had, he’d see three bubbles randomly pop up from time to time in Soonyoung’s chat thread. He didn’t get any messages, though.

Wonwoo stayed home most of the time. Probably grew paler than he usually was during the school year. Played games, conversed with random people who might be teenage girls or fifty-year-old men, he had no idea. All that mattered was that they fought dragons together and traded gems. His equations were still neat. Script flowing across lined pages, graphs across blue squares.

Wonwoo was Wonwoo. Soonyoung was Soonyoung. Perhaps they were the kind of people who only spoke in proximity.

He talked to Jihoon a couple of times. Jihoon didn’t go out much either.

\---

When he got back to school, though, he clicked back with his roommate easily. Soonyoung was already in their room when Wonwoo got there, cardboard boxes straining underneath all of the weight inside, and he didn’t look any different. Ten-ten eyes. Squishy cheeks. Same Soonyoung.

“I got attacked by so many mosquitos,” Soonyoung said.

It was normal.

“Maybe it’s your blood type,” Wonwoo offered back. Same Wonwoo.

“I’ll get back to you on that, if I find out what my blood type is,” Soonyoung said, and grinned. “Hey, Wonwoo. I missed you.”

Wonwoo rolled his eyes and didn’t say it back, but he thought it.

Soonyoung didn’t ask him why Wonwoo never called or texted or anything, and Wonwoo was grateful. They settled back into their routine of unhealthy cereal and trying to buy slightly less overpriced textbooks and Soonyoung grabbing any and all of the free crap that their university offered.

“I call dibs on the blue mini highlighter,” Wonwoo said.

“But that’s the one that smells like raspberries,” Soonyoung complained. “ _Fine_ , you ass, but I’m keeping the tangerine one. Would you like a free condom, too, or no?”

Wonwoo pursed his lips. Perhaps it’d come in handy for a later experiment; maybe Jihoon would want one. “Sure.”

Soonyoung gaped. Wonwoo felt a prick of irritation. _Why’d you offer, then_?

“Not for me,” Wonwoo said defensively, fumbling. “It’s just— actually, I— you know what, why’d you _take_ any of that stuff, anyway?”

“It was free? Why would you _not_ take free stuff?”

“Free or not, most of this we’re not going to use! You hate post-it notes.”

“Listen, post-it notes are actually the worst, you can’t even make origami with them when you’re bored because they can’t decide whether to be sticky or not,” Soonyoung sniffed. “ _You_ like them, though.”

Wonwoo rolled his eyes. “I like being organized.”

“See, that’s the problem with you smart people,” Soonyoung said, like he existed outside of the bubble of _smart people_ himself. “At least I acknowledge that my entire life is a mess and nothing’s going to fix it.”

“That’s kind of morbid as hell. You okay?”

But it felt different, for some reason. Like the distance that had been created over the summer had not— well, _altered_ the shape of their relationship, exactly, but took off a cover that had previously been on there, that had allowed Wonwoo to ignore everything. Wonwoo could say with a hundred percent certainty now that maybe the way he felt toward Soonyoung wasn’t the same way as he felt toward Jihoon.

“Oh,” Jihoon said. “I think you might be screwed.”

Jihoon wasn’t exactly a fountain of comfort, but he didn’t do pity, and Wonwoo appreciated that. Jihoon wasn’t interested in romance or feelings or anything like that in _general_ , which Wonwoo wholly appreciated. When Wonwoo was with Jihoon, he didn't feel confused. Emotions were chemicals, feelings a mixture of hormones. Social interaction was a bunch of atoms interacting with more atoms.

Unfortunately, though, if it was _Jihoon_ saying he was screwed, then he probably was.

\---

It was October when it all fell apart.

Soonyoung was kind of sick, which was annoying because Wonwoo was the one who had to deal with his sniffling. “I’m _fine_ ,” Soonyoung said, rolling his eyes and coughing. “Wonwoo, please. I have no time to get sick. This isn’t anything.”

“How do we have no cold medicine _or_ soup in the fucking pantry,” Wonwoo mumbled, looking through the shelves. “Wait, Soon— when the hell’d you buy _glitter glue_ —”

“It’s a thing for Halloween, and second, don’t tell me you’re going to try to make _soup_ , we nearly had to ban instant ramen after that one time—”

“That was because of _you_ , need I remind you again?”

The whole thing ended up with Wonwoo going to the nearby CVS to get cold medicine because, again, Soonyoung being sick was really annoying. The CVS was already decked out in Halloween gear— someone had graffitied a pumpkin on the window, then wrote _time to get spoopy_ underneath it in what was actually very nice calligraphy— and the aisles were stocked with giant packs of value-size candy.

There was a sale on peanut butter cups. Fifty percent off. Wonwoo, after getting the cold medicine, shrugged and took a four-pack, thinking, why not?

And then he was standing in line thinking about how the peanut butter cups were _probably_ on the verge of expiration to be that cheap, and he was thinking about problem number seventeen on his homework because he couldn’t figure it out for the life of him, and he was thinking about how touch was like a foreign language with Soonyoung because he liked to hug people a lot but generally respected Wonwoo’s personal bubble, and honestly, Wonwoo’s personal bubble could screw off—

And then he thought, _oh_.

_Maybe I’m a little bit in love with him_.

“Excuse me?” the cashier asked, popping her bubble gum. “Are you a CVS member?”

He was just a broke college student who was having an existential crisis, actually. “No.”

“Would you like a pumpkin sticker?” she asked, holding up an orange and black square that had been snipped off a sticker roll. Her eyes were pitying. She’d probably seen a lot of this in her time as a cashier.

Wonwoo nodded, and he walked out of the store with a plastic bag and the sticker on the back of his hand.

\---

The realization was pretty tame. The freaking out came later.

He wasn’t prepared for this. It was like Jun all over again, and he’d forgotten how it felt— or maybe it hadn’t felt like this at all? Whatever. He hated it, the soda fountain bubbling away in his stomach, the warmth whenever Soonyoung spoke, the ever-present urge to kiss him. And kissing was just, like, a mouth sandwich. A human concept. And he wanted to do it with Soonyoung. He was going insane.

His chest felt simultaneously too-full and too-empty all at once. A cantaloupe with its seeds scooped out. A rational graph with seventeen asymptotes.

“I,” he said to Seungcheol and Jihoon one day, when he caught his thoughts going down an increasingly familiar rabbit hole, “need to jump in a cold pool. Right now.”

“There’s one in the rec center, I think,” Jihoon said, helpfully, although the expression on his face implied that he probably already knew what was going on. “Newly installed. You know what’s really disgusting? The chlorine smell that comes through the vents.”

“The locker room is even worse, there’s fucking mildew everywhere,” Seungcheol said. “But maybe we should ask Wonwoo why he wants to jump in a cold pool?”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to ask,” Wonwoo said.

“No, you can tell us,” Jihoon said, making a face around his sandwich.

He was grateful for Jihoon’s disinterest, the knowledge that Jihoon wouldn’t press if Wonwoo didn’t want to say. There was safety in that which made it possible for Wonwoo to tell.

“So… um… I may have a thing for Soonyoung,” Wonwoo admitted. Jihoon’s face contorted. “Not a sex thing. Just a thing.”

“That’s… interesting,” Jihoon said. He didn’t seem too disgusted, at least.

“Really?” Seungcheol said, looking genuinely interested. “When’d that happen?”

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo said. He wanted to get off this topic. “Is there actually mildew in the locker room?”

“The place is an entire fucking petri dish,” Seungcheol said flippantly. “But hey, Jihoon, you’re going to kill Soonyoung if he messes up, though, right?”

Jihoon rubbed his eyes. “Yes, yes, I’m already planning out murder techniques,” he said tiredly, and Wonwoo hated that he felt warm. “Hey, you guys know where the rec center is? I’m planning on jumping in the cold pool too. Possibly drowning there also.”

Seungcheol shook his head. “There’s a lifeguard, don’t even try.”

It didn’t really come up again with them, and Wonwoo was grateful. To be honest, the only one that would be interested in Wonwoo’s love life would be Soonyoung, and for obvious reasons, Soonyoung was not an option right now.

To Wonwoo’s surprise and relief, he could still talk to Soonyoung fairly normally. Granted, his eye contact might not be steady, but it still felt natural to banter, throw words back and forth like they were playing a game of basketball. It was when Wonwoo was alone that he was scared with the way his chest felt so full with want. He knew that even if somehow Soonyoung did like him back, he might not like Wonwoo as much as Wonwoo liked Soonyoung, and that if they kissed, Soonyoung would be his firsts while he’d just be a string of middles. It didn’t hurt so much as it brought Wonwoo to reality.

\---

In November, Wonwoo had one of the most bizarre conversations in his life.

First off, it involved a liberal arts major, and a sort-of STEM major (Wonwoo wasn’t sure.) Second, he didn’t know these two people until about an hour ago. Third, it occurred at a college social. It was kind of surreal, but maybe the weirdest part of it was that it was all so _natural_.

One of them was Jeonghan, Minghao’s boyfriend. _Small campus_ , Wonwoo thought. The other was Seokmin. Who the hell was Seokmin? Wonwoo didn’t know yesterday, and he still had no idea now. But the three of them were talking, and it’d been going on for a good hour or so. Wonwoo was pretty sure that he’d end up divulging his entire life story by the time he finished his sandwich.

“Okay, but how is Seokmin’s smile even real?” Jeonghan asked— seriously, what even _was_ this conversation?

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Wonwoo asked. “Minghao?”

Jeonghan waved a dismissive hand. “This isn’t even gay, dude. This is like… for science.”

Wonwoo normally wouldn’t believe something like that, but considering how bright Seokmin’s smile was, he had no trouble. “It has its own wattage,” Wonwoo said, and took another bite of his sandwich. “Maybe he inherited electricity in his DNA.”

“You’re the STEM major, not me, I wouldn’t know.”

Seokmin was wearing his smile right now. “Thanks, you guys. I’ll keep that in mind for when I’m flirting.”

“Wait, you’re not dating anyone?” Wonwoo asked, brain-to-mouth filter apparently broken for the time being.

Seokmin shook his head. “Nah. I’m bi and also still very much single.”

“Nice,” Wonwoo said. _Definitely_ broken. “So am I. Not the bi part. Single. I’m gay.”

Jeonghan snickered. “Do I need to leave right now? Give you guys some room?”

“No, no, stay,” Seokmin said, laughing. “It’s okay, I’m way too swamped with stuff to date anyone right now, being a math major who actually wants to sing is hard.”

Wonwoo winced. “That sounds rough.”

He’d never really wanted to be anything but a statistician, after he found out what it was. Sure, in second grade, he’d wanted to be a police officer, an astronaut, all those things, but those were never real ambitions.

And Wonwoo would feel offended by how quickly Soonyoung brushed Jeonghan’s insinuation off, but reality was that there wasn’t any apparent chemistry between him and Seokmin. Their talk might be considered flirting if Wonwoo tried to make it so, and if they went on a date it could possibly turn into something more, but Wonwoo had never been the kind of person to go on a date for the sake of going on a date, for the sake of _maybes_. And of course, there was Soonyoung.

“Plus, I’d be kinda hard-pressed to find someone who likes me back,” Seokmin said.

Jeonghan’s mouth thinned out, and Wonwoo nearly dropped his sandwich. “What do you mean by that?” Jeonghan asked sharply.

Seokmin shrugged. “Eh, it’s lame.”

“I have been nothing but lame for this entire weird-ass conversation,” Wonwoo retorted.

Jeonghan nodded. “What Wonwoo said.” (It took Wonwoo a whole five seconds to realize he’d been insulted, and by then it was too late.) “So you might as well tell us.”

Seokmin’s eyes were wide. He clearly hadn’t been expecting that kind of reaction to such a casual statement, and he looked like he might’ve regretted saying anything at all, but then he sighed and said, “I don’t know… like back home, I was always just kinda that chorus airhead, you know? Like, there was this one girl in high school who I really liked but she kinda… like… said she didn’t really consider me a guy…”

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Wonwoo said, and Jeonghan shushed him.

“And yeah. So I’m just one of those people who constantly exist in the friendzone. I’ve been prank-asked out thirteen times. It’s cool though. It’s cool.” Seokmin shook his head. “Wow, that sounds even lamer when said aloud. Why’d I tell you guys that? Feel free to judge, if you want.”

Jeonghan looked like he’d just swallowed an entire lemon. And Wonwoo… wasn’t sure. For some reason, he was thinking of Soonyoung, offering to punch out the guy who’d hurt him back in high school. Soonyoung, saying, _I’d date you_. Wonwoo constantly thinking that Soonyoung was just saying shit like that, that he was just mocking him.

Because the simple truth was that it hurt.

It hurt to constantly exist in friendzones, to get rejected, to get prank-asked out, to get your heart broken, to have people thoughtlessly say insults that stayed with you years afterward. It made you feel, in Seokmin’s words, well— lame. That was a truth. But there was another truth, too. Wonwoo didn’t think that Seokmin was lame at all. Sure, the glasses didn’t sit on his face right and he stuttered a bit, but Wonwoo also thought his megawatt smile was amazing, that it was incredible that he was still singing even after everyone told him to give it up. Words like _I’d date you_ and _I’d punch those idiots out_ sprang to his mouth. But he pushed them down.

“That’s literally the most fucking stupid thing I’ve heard,” Wonwoo said instead.

Damn. No off to the best start. Seokmin gaped. Jeonghan’s brows furrowed.

“That came out wrong,” Wonwoo said. “I just— you’re amazing, Seokmin. There’s nothing wrong with you. If someone doesn’t like you, they’re the ones who are missing out. My love life consists of one unrequited crush back in high school and one current crush that is on its way to being unrequited, and yeah, it feels like shit, but you’re not lame for being good at music and being kind, alright? You’re not unlikeable for not thinking and being the same way as most people. Society’s really— society’s really dumb.”

“Wow,” Jeonghan said. “You should be a motivational speaker.”

“Holy shit,” Seokmin said softly. “Did you have notecards or something? What?”

Wonwoo looked down at his sandwich, which he’d accidentally decimated with his hands over the course of the conversation. “No, that was improv. Sorry.”

“Whatever it was, dude, it was sick,” Seokmin said. “I mean… I’m not sure if I can believe it right away, but thanks.”

Wonwoo shrugged uncomfortably. To be honest, he had no real idea where that came from either. He didn’t know Seokmin that well, had no idea how this conversation even began— it probably had something to do with Jeonghan, and magnetizing charm— had no idea why he allowed himself to be pulled along with the tide and let it get to as deep as it did. He was pretty sure they started off discussing Fruit Loops.

After today, he’d probably never talk to either of them again. This would be stashed inside of his mind in the box _did that really happen_ , along with the ghost he saw in his refrigerator at the tender age of nine.

“So,” Jeonghan asked, with a shit-eating grin. “You mentioned a current crush?”

Seokmin glared, but it was half-hearted. “Jeonghan—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Wonwoo said. “And it isn’t really a crush.” Jeonghan gave him a look, like, _dude, it’s totally a crush_. “Okay, fine. But yeah. Like I said. It’s not going to work out.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because”— Wonwoo got the vague sense of snapping handcuffs around his wrists, of digging his own grave — “he doesn’t. He doesn’t like people like me.”

Jeonghan stared at him, duly unimpressed. Seokmin said, “You give me all of that great advice and it turns out that you’re not following it yourself?”

“You’re a sham,” Jeonghan added.

“I just—” Wonwoo said weakly. Jeonghan continued to give him that look, and Wonwoo cracked. “Fine. _Fine_. Maybe it’s just because— we won’t work? Yeah? That happens sometimes, right?” Jeonghan shook his head and turned away.

Wonwoo felt vaguely like he managed to piss off a god.

“What’s he look like?” Seokmin asked, and Wonwoo swallowed. He didn’t take pictures very often, but Soonyoung did, and he’d hacked into Wonwoo’s phone a couple of times and taken selfies. Wonwoo deleted most of them but had kept a few, and he chose a random one and gave it to Seokmin. Wonwoo felt like he owed him this, at least.

“Like that.”

“He’s cute,” Seokmin said. “You should go for it.”

“I just said—”

“Yeah, and it was all bullshit. Good luck, Wonwoo.” Seokmin grinned, and it was dazzling, brighter than the overhead fluorescent lighting. “I believe in you.”

\---

Wonwoo had been right about one thing, at least. He didn’t see Jeonghan or Seokmin again for the rest of the year. But Wonwoo thought a lot about what Seokmin had said.

_You should go for it._

Logically, there were a lot of problems with that advice. First off, they were friends. If Wonwoo’s feelings were one-sided, and Soonyoung were to find out about them, it would just be plain awkward. Telling someone something like that gave them the upper hand, and while Wonwoo doubted Soonyoung would blackmail him or anything, they wouldn’t be on even ground anymore.

Second off, they were roommates. Wonwoo had approximately two square feet where he could be heartbroken alone; he’d have to schedule his crying and music-listening sessions. Not that Wonwoo would do that if Soonyoung rejected him. Actually, Wonwoo had no idea how he’d react. He didn’t really have time to be heartbroken, with his workload.

Third off, Soonyoung had been distant lately.

It was December, fat flakes of snow drifting down from the sky and falling in thin sheets over the grass, pristine white for three seconds before being marred by footprints and dirt. The ice was gray and blue, and Soonyoung himself was cold too, rejecting offers of hot chocolate and promises of Jet-puff marshmallows, face blank and a little sad. Wonwoo wasn’t a mind-reader. He didn’t know what was going on. When Soonyoung had been upset before, he’d done it in a whir of flame and fire— tears for frustration, rants for asshole professors and people. Not at all like this silence.

“Okay,” Wonwoo said hesitantly, a night when their schedules synced up. Soonyoung was eating ramen. “What’s up?”

Soonyoung looked up. “How much pepper did you put in this?” he said, grimacing. “I’m sweating bullets.” It was true. His face was shiny and pink.

“I forgot,” Wonwoo said, and wondered if he should let Soonyoung deflect like that, allow himself to be lead off into a mindless tangent about Soonyoung’s leaky sudoriferous glands. But he’d opened his mouth with an initiative. “You’ve been— off? Lately? Do you wanna talk about it?” _Christ._

Soonyoung snorted. “No.”

“But you’re admitting something’s off.”

Soonyoung stabbed his fork into his ramen, twirled it around the springs. “I guess I am,” he said shortly. “But you know. It’s dumb. When’d we get actual silverware, by the way? When did our broke-ass budget allow for that?”

“ _Soonyoung_.”

“ _Wonwoo_ ,” Soonyoung mocked.  

Wonwoo gave up, and let Soonyoung talk about how Chan had gotten a solo in his upcoming dance performance, and how he was totally going to steal a ticket to Korea to go watch. But his conscience jabbed at him. _You’re like your dad_. When Wonwoo was younger, his father had been well-meaning but not the most emotionally adept, never questioned Wonwoo’s _I’m fines_ and _yeah nothing happened at school today_. Just sent him off to his room with an awkward pat on his head and a reminder to finish up with his math homework.

That did it.

Wonwoo cut Soonyoung off mid-ramble. “Seriously, what the hell is on your mind?”

“The pretty pattern on this fork handle, like, wow, are those hamsters?”

“Shut the fuck up about the eating utensil and tell me.”

“ _Okay, Mom, Jesus_ ,” Soonyoung snapped, and Wonwoo tried not to let his hurt show. This was the price of getting an answer.

Soonyoung took a deep breath, mumbled, “So I might’ve talked to Jihoon a while ago. About— um— about, like, us— or, like, past us—”

Wonwoo’s hands went clammy. He’d almost forgotten about that. That Jihoon and Soonyoung used to date. Jihoon never talked about their relationship, beyond a few quips here and there, and those were usually lost in the sea of the main topic.

“And he was kinda upset at me, because I was like, _okay, but we didn’t work out_ , and he was all—” he deepened his voice in what was an _extremely_ poor imitation of Jihoon “— _you don’t get to use me as an excuse after all these years_ , and like, you know, we probably scared off a couple of pigeons on the quad, and I think this one freshman girl might’ve been, like, terrified out of her mind, but you know. Whatever. Ooh, these _are_ hamsters. Metallic hamsters would be a good name for a band.”

“An excuse for what?” Wonwoo asked. “What were you two fighting about?”

Soonyoung shifted uncomfortably. “You know. Silverware. And all that.”

“Shut up,” Wonwoo said, exasperated. “What were you _really_ fighting about?”

Note to self: Soonyoung was good at avoiding the topic. It was like trying to peel slime off the roof. Or like trying to lasso a lubricated snake.

Soonyoung mumbled, “You, actually.”

It was so quiet that Wonwoo almost wondered if he’d misheard. But he knew he hadn’t. There was silence, the whir of the faulty heater going off in the background. Soonyoung took another awkward bite of his noodles, eyes downcast.

“Me?”

“Yeah. Jihoon said you… he said you might like me.”

Wonwoo only ever had good things to say about Jihoon, but Wonwoo decided that the next time he saw that guy, he’d strangle him. He felt like someone had punched a hole out of his chest.

“Oh,” he said. And then, because Wonwoo was tired of lies, “... yeah, I do.”

Soonyoung closed his eyes. “I know.”  

Wonwoo’s entire body shook like a leaf. This was Jun all over again, a million times worse, because at least Jun hadn’t known. When Soonyoung opened his eyes, Wonwoo was sure he would see it. The pity. The _awkwardness_. And Wonwoo felt the ever-present feeling that no one would ever want him wash over him again. It twisted around him. Suffocated him.

The thought of Soonyoung looking at him with sympathetic, apologetic eyes— or worse, _indifference_ — when he came back from a one-night stand broke him, and Wonwoo was too overwhelmed to think about what Soonyoung might actually be saying. Instead, he thought about gravity.

Position was acceleration twice integrated, and in math class, they were neat parabolas, with a set vertex and x-intercepts. Graphs didn’t cover what happened when you got to y equals zero, though. It didn’t say whether or not you were sheltered from impact, if there was a trampoline or a warm pair of arms to catch you. For Wonwoo, there wasn’t. There was just the ugly sound of his body hitting the ground.

“Okay,” Wonwoo said, soft. “Okay.”

His noodles were soggy. Wonwoo got up and walked out of the apartment. By the time he got back, Soonyoung was gone.

\---

Contrary to what he’d told himself before, he didn’t strangle Jihoon the next time he saw him. He didn’t even say anything prickly. It wasn’t Jihoon’s fault, anyway. Soonyoung already knew. Jihoon didn’t do hugs, so he didn’t hug Wonwoo, but his eyes were sympathetic, and that was enough.

“He’s staying with a friend of his,” Jihoon said.

Wonwoo took a bite of his pasta. “Good to know.” He felt numb.

“He just… he’s… I don’t think he…” Jihoon shook his head. “He’s an idiot.”

“What sitcom’s got the two of you this worked up?” Seungcheol asked curiously, sliding into the seat across from them. They were eating indoors because of the cold. Wonwoo missed the pineapple hole.

“It’s not a sitcom, it’s Wonwoo’s life,” Jihoon snapped, and Seungcheol made an _o_ with his mouth. “Kwon Soonyoung and his fucking commitment issues. Or like, commitment complex. I don’t know, none of us are psychology majors.”

“Minhyun’s a psychology major,” Seungcheol said. “Oh— and _this_ is why Soonyoung’s been staying with him for the past few days? Wow, I’m an idiot for not realizing sooner.”  

Jihoon sighed, and Wonwoo looked at Seungcheol, almost able to see the pieces slotting together inside his forehead. It’d been five days since Soonyoung had walked out of the dorm, and Wonwoo wasn’t sad anymore. Well, he was, but there was also a sense of acceptance, too. Because if there was one thing he’d learned from that weird-ass talk with Seokmin and Jeonghan, it was that it wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t his fault, no matter how much his mind tried to tell him otherwise.

“Wonwoo, you holding up okay?” Seungcheol asked.

Wonwoo shrugged. “I could be better, but yeah. I failed one assignment, but I’m back on track now.”

Jihoon rubbed his temples. “I regret involving myself in this, I’m never doing this again,” he said. “But, Wonwoo. Soonyoung and I had a fight a while ago. About you.”

“Yeah, he told me about that.” Wonwoo paused. “Well, sort of. I couldn’t really get a straight answer out of him.”  

“I just—” Jihoon looked pained. “I just… it was because I could tell you really liked him.” Wonwoo thought about strangling Jihoon again. “And I also thought it was a mutual thing.” Wonwoo closed his eyes. “I still think that. I’m pretty sure he’s in fucking denial. Because, uh, back before college— in high school, he went out with people with strings attached. They always broke up with him, though.”

Something cold slid down Wonwoo’s esophagus.

“I was the last one,” Jihoon said softly. “And I mean, he’s over me now. We’re friends. But yeah. He said I didn’t get to tell him anything when I was the one who cut it off.”

Seungcheol looked extremely lost, and Wonwoo couldn’t blame him.

But Wonwoo was starting to understand something, at least. Most people were built in search of a soulmate, and the thing was, in real life, there weren’t red strings or matching marks to direct them to each other. It was just trial and error. Messing up over and over again. Trying to find someone to complement you was a process with no formulas or guarantees. Some people struck lucky the first time. Others became disillusioned and stopped looking entirely.

And neither of those were necessarily a bad way to be, in itself. But sticking stubbornly to a set belief for protection when it was actually causing pain…

“Earth to Wonwoo?” Jihoon asked. “Shit, did I break you?”

“I think you broke him,” Seungcheol said.

“No, I’m not broken,” Wonwoo assured them. He shook his head. “I’m just…yeah. Thanks for telling me that, Jihoon.”

“No problem,” Jihoon said. “I won’t say anytime, though. That was fucking painful.”

\---

According to the multiverse theory, there was a universe in which Soonyoung didn’t end up with Wonwoo. Also according to the multiverse theory, there was also a universe in which Soonyoung did.

Wonwoo was okay in both.

However, there was also another universe in which a passing taco truck hit Wonwoo and landed him into a coma for a month. Wonwoo wasn’t okay in that one, but that had nothing to do with Kwon Soonyoung.

\---

When Wonwoo got back to the apartment a week later, Soonyoung was back. He was fiddling around with his phone, and when Wonwoo stepped in, Soonyoung looked up, deer-in-the-headlights. Terrified.

“Hey,” Soonyoung said. Unsure. “I wasn’t sure, but we have to pay the rent today, right?”

“That’s tomorrow, actually.”

Silence.

“Oh. Well… I guess this is why I needed a roommate in the first place.”

Wonwoo laughed, quiet. “It’s okay.” He took a seat on the floor, and Soonyoung slid down the wall to join him. There were several feet separating the two of them, and the air was tense. Melted butter. Peanut oil. Wonwoo couldn’t breathe.

“I’m sorry,” Soonyoung finally said. “I should’ve told you I was staying someplace else.”

“You’re okay.” (Actually, Wonwoo had been worried, but he didn’t feel like it was the time to bring that up.) “Jihoon told me where you were.”

“Oh. That’s— good.”

“Yeah. He also told me the details about your fight.”

Soonyoung swallowed. “That’s kinda embarrassing…”

“I don’t think it is,” Wonwoo said sharply. “Remember? I haven’t dated at all. The one time I liked someone, I got rejected.”

“I told you, that guy was stupid,” Soonyoung muttered, looking away.

“I could say the same thing about the guys who dumped you.”

“It was guys _and_ girls. I’m bi.”

And it was bad, because Wonwoo wanted to laugh, reminded of the time he and Seokmin had talked. But he didn’t, because that wasn’t a good response during the current scenario. “Okay. Guys _and_ girls.”

“No, but—” Soonyoung shook his head. “You don’t— fine, I get it, not everyone clicks, but still. How could he not like you? You’re so… you deserve a lot. Like, someone who can understand the graphs you draw and who gets what you’re talking about when you bring up, like, math points, or the shoe-in method or whatever—”

“Mass points and the shoelace method?” He internally winced. _Not. The. Time._

“See? My point.”

“But I told you,” Wonwoo said. “I don’t need to date a clone.”

The air went from thick to breakable. They were meters away from each other, but at the same time, they were way too close. They were wearing layers for the cold, but Wonwoo felt like he’d been stripped bare. Soonyoung’s hands went up to cover his face. Wonwoo’s fingers closed around the fabric of his jeans.

“What if I told you I think it’s insane anyone would break up with you?” Wonwoo asked.

Soonyoung’s fingers opened enough to reveal a sliver of smile.

“What if I told you I think your polar graphs are really hot?”

\---

It was awkward, but Wonwoo was pretty sure it was a good kind of awkward.

Wonwoo wondered if Soonyoung was trying to mess with him, saying and doing stuff that made Wonwoo’s face want to burn right off his head. But Wonwoo got to mess with him too. He wore Soonyoung’s shirt one time, probably on accident, but maybe on purpose a little bit too, and Soonyoung muttered what sounded like _oh my god_ before stalking out of the room with his own face bright red.

Wonwoo wasn’t going to lie. He’d liked that a lot.

It was New Year’s Eve again and the two of them weren’t outside this time. As with Soonyoung’s birthday, Wonwoo was part of the quiet part of it. Soonyoung had gotten back home around nine or ten, surprisingly not drunk— _it was afternoon, Wonwoo, you wound me_ — and they watched a movie while waiting for the clock to hit twelve.

The movie was only an hour and a half but they stretched it to two with how many times Soonyoung paused it to comment. Despite that, they still had around half an hour to midnight when the credits rolled.

“I hope they’ve got good music in 2018,” Soonyoung said.

“I heard this group’s going to be releasing this song called _Hot Potato_ ,” Wonwoo said idly. “I feel like that’s the kind of thing you’d like.”

Soonyoung snorted. “That sounds incredible, link me if you see the MV,” he said. “Hey, thirty minutes to midnight— shit, Wonwoo, is our clock accurate?”

“I think it’s five minutes off.”

“Oh my god,” Soonyoung muttered, and yanked his phone out of his pocket and set it on the coffee table, where he searched up a worldwide countdown timer. The _tick, tick_ filled the room. “I forgot. You’ve got no holiday spirit at all.”

“A year later, I still see no point to New Year’s. Does anyone ever actually go through with their resolutions?”

Although, Wonwoo was bluffing a little bit. Because to be honest? It was cool that he’d stayed alive another three hundred and sixty-five days. It was cool that the Earth hadn’t swerved off its orbit, that the sun hadn’t imploded, that some reckless comet hadn’t gone and smashed a hole into the crust, that the zombie apocalypse was a thing for 2018 to worry about. But Wonwoo wasn’t going to _say_ shit like that.

“Rude,” Soonyoung said. “I made a resolution, but now I’m not telling you.’

“ _Now I’m not telling you_ ,” Wonwoo mocked. “Cool with me.”

“You’re awful. I’m telling you,” Soonyoung said. “My New Year’s Resolutions is not to care anymore.”

“...That sounds like an excuse to commit murder.”

Soonyoung punched him. “ _No_ , that was _not_ where I was going with this. I just meant… I’m not going to care. If you dump me. Amongst other things.” Wonwoo’s eyes widened. “Because, hey, I like you a lot! It’s actually goddamn terrifying, but whatever!”

“Wait, we’re dating?” Wonwoo asked dumbly.

“We’re not?” Soonyoung’s face contorted. “Oh my god. We’re not. I forgot to ask you out. I just told you your polar graphs were hot and then, like, we went back to being friends. Fuck. Go out with me?”

Wonwoo laughed. “What if I say no? Will you care?”

“The resolution isn’t in effect yet,” Soonyoung said. “And don’t mess with me. Not now.”

Wonwoo swallowed hard. _Not caring anymore_. That sounded pretty good. Don’t give a crap about all the voices, external or internal, telling him he was a mistake, that he wasn’t doing things right, that he should be something else.

He realized he’d never heard the verbal confirmation before, either. _I like you._ He wondered how Soonyoung could just say stuff like that without physically imploding. Without having his temperature streak up exponentially until he blew off this plane of existence. _Wonwoo_ couldn’t, for sure. His chest felt warm. He was a little scared of how his mouth seemed to want to curve into a smile and stay like that forever.

The cynical part of himself was disgusted. It was also, unfortunately, smiling too.

“Yeah,” Wonwoo said, and Soonyoung grinned, relieved. “I will. Does that mean we’re doing the New Year’s kiss thing? Unless you think it’s cliche.”

His brain yelled: _what the fuck???? Are you out of your mind???_

“It’s cliche,” Soonyoung agreed. “But suddenly, I don’t mind.”

“I haven’t… kissed anyone before, though,” Wonwoo muttered, trying to backtrack. “Well, I mean, you have all 2018 to kiss someone else if it turns out I suck, at least. Silver linings.”

“It’s not a thing that requires prior experience,” Soonyoung said, although Wonwoo was pretty sure Soonyoung was just saying that to make him feel better. “And shut the hell up. I’m not… I’m not going to kiss anyone else. While I’m with you.”

(Wonwoo was a little relieved to note that Soonyoung’s shamelessness had _some_ threshold. His face turned pink when he said that.)

Five minutes to midnight. Soonyoung leaned over and idly turned Wonwoo’s hand over his thigh, pressed the cracks on his fingers, the lines on his palm. Wonwoo didn’t know what Soonyoung was looking for— the skin was kind of gross, actually, all dry and fingers bitten uneven— but he didn’t mind. He let Soonyoung be.

He wasn’t scared anymore. Time stretched and warped as the rest of the world held its breath for midnight. Maybe in 2018, Soonyoung would decide that he’d made a mistake, that his attraction to Wonwoo had been an illusion, a false idea. Maybe in 2018, Wonwoo would decide that they didn’t work out, and break it off. Who cared? They were perfectly good amalgamations of parts, of personalities and features and ideologies— the fact they were together was a side bonus. They could stand on their own and the rest of the world couldn’t touch them.

“Five,” Soonyoung said. “Thr— shit! Four—”

Wonwoo laughed, liking this strange, momentary burst of sure confidence. He reached over to tangle his fingers in Soonyoung’s shirt, to bring his face closer. Soonyoung’s breath hitched. On the scratched-up coffee table, fireworks unfurled in pixelated color, screen flashing a row of red zeros.

And Wonwoo, falling, closed the gap.

**Author's Note:**

> To the prompter, and to everyone who made it to the bottom— fingers crossed that these two things are not mutually exclusive— thank you so much, and I hope you liked it. I'm really late because I had to make a new account and did not realize how long reincarnation for AO3 users would take, but happy 2018!


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